Admissions

LREI seeks to enroll students who are bright, curious, motivated and who show strong academic promise. The School is committed to creating an environment that is reflective of the wider community by enrolling students from diverse religious, ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds and gender identities. Creating this diverse student body fosters opportunities for deeper cultural learning and understanding.

We Are LREI

Welcome to LREI. We are now, as we have always been, guided by our school's mission. As a truly progressive school community, we never shy away from the challenges and the possibilities of change and growth. It is this bold, experimental, progressive vision of education that continues to inspire and guide the LREI community today. What we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what we will do tomorrow are all a part of a coherent 14-year experience inspired by our mission.

Academics

Since its founding, the LREI experience has been grounded in progressive principles that shape the design of program in each of our divisions. These principles place students at the center of their learning experiences, call on us to narrow the distance between the world around students and their school experiences, and engage learners in authentic problem solving on a daily basis. Our mission driven approach informs all aspects of our 14-year experience.

Life @ LREI

Our founding ideals of learning that is grounded in experience, inquiry, collaboration, growth and active democratic citizenship inform every aspect of daily life at LREI. LREI truly is a community of learners; it is a place where students, faculty and families come together each day in the spirit of creativity, collaboration and consequence.

Our Community

LREI is a community built on understanding and respect for others. Like New York City, we are diverse in every sense of the word. We are scientists, artists, historians and more. We embody a wide range of interests, beliefs, family structures and backgrounds. We thrive on the unique ideas and perspectives each person brings to the school.

Inside an MS Classroom with Principal Ana Fox Chaney

LREI

The daily experience of students in a progressive classroom is mysterious to most adults whose own childhoods were spent in more or less traditional schools. To believe in Elisabeth Irwin’s vision of a school that is more laboratory than monastery, where “children experiment with life” does not necessarily mean that we can imagine what that looks like in practice, particularly once children are of middle school age. Seeing the myriad ways teachers engage their students, and draw them in to authentic conversation, debate, and problem solving is something that is hard to replicate with a second-hand account. Also, while middle school is largely about students finding and forging their independence, it’s also the last few years that parents have this close a seat to the daily life of their children. They will only get more private and more independent; their daily lives will unfold more and more out of view. I encourage you to take this opportunity as you have it.

What to Expect in an LREI middle school classroom?

Community

“At a time like this when everyone is thinking in terms of world problems, it is sometimes hard to keep our minds on the small problems of the day to day life of our children. Yet the way that the foundations of democracy are build is by daily habits of recognizing the rights of those who differ from ourselves.” - Elisabeth Irwin

Teachers create classroom routines and structures to foster student relationships, to give them practice sharing and comparing ideas, negotiating their differences and appreciating each others’ strengths. You can expect to see students in groups, and the teacher acting as coach - nudging conversations, guilding dialogue, managing and reinforcing norms of respect.

Student voices

“The new type of teacher shares experiences with the children rather than imposing tasks upon them. This means that the age-old conflict between the interests of adults and children is minimized, and the relationship to authority through adolescence and adult years is not spoiled by the feeling of revolt that is so often engendered by the old school of discipline.” - Elisabeth Irwin

Students talk - to their teachers and to each other - more often than the teacher talks to them. The role of the teacher is to create, as Elisabeth Irwin would have said, a rich environment. You can expect to teachers providing intriguing problems and provocations, books and essays to compare and contrast, materials to manipulate, and products (an experiment, or a song) to create.

Experimentation

“Above all things, the progressive schools believe that childhood is a part of life and not just a preface to something more important, and that at every age children should have a chance to respond to the romance and adventure of the world around them.” - Elisabeth Irwin

You will see students allowed to take risks and follow paths of their choosing. Teachers studiously avoid ‘rescuing’ students from wrong paths at the outset, or providing too much correction early on. Teachers convey respect and confidence in their students by letting them them respond authentically and fully to ideas, the environment, and to each other. More often than not, fallacies and errors are uncovered through conversation and debate, rather than a teachers’ correction.